When a person who is confined to a wheel chair attempts to shop for groceries or the like in a store, the individual is unable to use conventional shopping carts and is limited to gathering items which the person can pile on his or her lap.
Efforts have been made in the past to provide baskets which are attachable to certain wheel chairs and permit the user to shop using a basket attached to the wheel chair for which it is designed. Typically, such prior baskets which have been designed to attach to specific wheel chairs are not adaptable to other wheel chairs other than those for which they have been specifically engineered. A typical basket which is attachable to a wheel chair for which it is designed is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,403,786. Other baskets can be attached using brackets located parallel to the arm rests of the wheel chair as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,526,419. Prior efforts to develope a basket or tray which is adaptable to a wide range of wheel chairs have resulted in small trays or baskets which extend across the arm rests of the wheel chair as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,659,099.
Although all of the foregoing references may be useful with wheel chairs for which they have been designed, none of them are usable on substantially all wheel chairs and carry a substantial amount of goods and, therefore, none of them are suitable for being provided by a store, for example, a grocery store, for attachment to the wheel chair belonging to any customer who enters the store. As a result, stores, including grocery stores, generally do not provide for baskets attachable to wheel chairs and customers confined to wheel chairs who do not provide their own baskets are extremely limited in the amount of merchandise that they can purchase at any one time.
It would be desirable to provide a support member which is attachable to a wide number of designs of wheel chairs. Such support members, when fitted with a basket, could be attached to the wheel chairs of most customers who enter a store for use within the store, and after merchandise has been moved to the customer's vehicle, the basket can be returned to the store as is done with shopping carts. Similarly, if the support structure is fitted with a tray, as for example in a cafeteria, a customer entering the cafeteria could attach a tray to his or her wheel chair and detach it upon completion of a meal.